Ishaha is a baker because she’s a morning person. She has no problem arriving slightly before dawn to start her work. Ishaha is also a crafter because she has good lungs and a strong throat and can talk for hours. Baking is a craft that takes a lot of time, after all.
Today she rushes through the gathering of her ingredients. Sleep had been hard to come by the previous night, an ache settling into her bones, and today that ache is worse. She scrunches her hands and holds back a cough. If possible, she wants to rush through work and go home.
She measures her spell ingredients - flour and eggs and water and a pinch of sugar. She mixes them together - hands and spoon and a punch for good luck before she sets aside fist-sized balls of dough to grow. Then, she starts feeding fire to the oven.
This is where the magic comes into play. Her ingredients are mixed and prepped, now it’s time to build up the energy source. Ishaha lays the groundwork for the spell literally and audibly. Humming softly, warming up her voice, she lays the sticks in the appropriate chamber under the oven.
One on the left, one on the right. One on the left, one on the right. Small stacks, and then she arranges peat in a circle between them. She lights it on fire. The peat catches, and she moves on to the next part of the ritual. Still humming a staccato beat to mirror the upcoming consumption of wood, Ishaha places larger pieces of wood in the chamber. First at the outer edge of her small piles, placed exactly seven beats apart. Once the small stacks alight she slides in three more thick pieces of wood arranged in a fan, joint end away from her. Then, she shuts the door and starts the rite properly.
“Oh gods of heat, warm this oven!” She bows before the oven. “Oh gods of heat, warm this oven!” She bows again, a total of five chants matching the split log pieces.
Then she turns to the awaiting loaves. “Oh gods of heat, merge with my creation.” She bows before the bread. “Oh gods of heat, merge with my creation.” Again, she does this five times.
And then she repeats the cycle five times, for a total of 50 chants and 50 bows.
It’s now time to add in two more pieces of wood. So she does, and then repeats her chats and bows, now in pairs. The gods must approve today because her bread dough is getting fat with their attention, full of divine energy. Ishaha’s good at bake craft - the gods always answer her.
She’s getting tired though, the ache in her bones and the scratch in her throat are getting annoying, and the most physically demanding part is just beginning. Still, Ishaha powers through.
She smothers a cough in her elbow as she pulls out the rack. Then, she lifts the cloth off her loaves. Ishaha claps, picks up the first loaf, and raises it to the sky. “Thank you for embodying this bake!” No bow this time, instead she twirls to showcase the risen loaf to the gods. Then she places it on the far left corner of the rack.
Her 8th time saying the rite, she finishes with a cough. It should be alright, she’d said the words clearly. Ishaha rushes through the rest, forcing words and not coughs out of her mouth. She stumbles over the 12th one, having to repeat the word ‘thank’ three times. She dearly hopes that doesn’t ruin her crafting.
A sprinkle of water on the oven door shows the temperature is right. With a gloved hand, Ishaha opens the door and gently deposits her full rack of loves on the clay shelf above the fire. A quick glance at the flames shows the gods are hungry, so she feeds it more wood before closing the door and begins the bulk of the rite.
Ishaha bends over, touches her toes, and then slowly trails her hands up her body until her fingers reach for the sky. “Grow!” she chants. “Expand!”
She opens her arms wide, gathering energy, and tosses it at the oven. “Divine heat, gift of the gods, fill this space!”
She bows, walks to the other side of the oven, and repeats. She has to do 30 times on each side, and she manages the first few with no problem. But as Ishaha bends over for a toe touch, coughs rack her body. She jerks up, thumping her chest, trying to get air, and it’s only after her body settles does she realizes she’s not just interrupted the ritual, but stopped it. She doesn’t remember her count. She’s stopped chanting. She’s lost the god’s attention.
She looks toward the oven in horror. All that time, preparing the oven and the bread, lost. Her perfect record of bake craft, always having pleased the gods and gotten warm bread as a result, gone. And all because -
Another cough shutters in her chest and she forces it down. There’s been too many disruptions! Maybe she can salvage this if she just doesn’t cough. But keeping her mouth closed hurts her chest, and Ishaha’s cough bursts out of her.
She cries. Oh, the bread is ruined now. So ruined. She collapses on a seat to cry, sniffing as she watches the sunrise. Some baker she is. Some crafter, speaker of gods.
She blames her distress for missing the smell at first. But it wafts through her small workspace, warm and tasty and yeasty. Ishaha turns toward the oven, it’s heat has never gone away, and cautiously she grabs her glove and opens the door.
Her loaves are fat and oval, golden and baked. She pulls them out, cuts into one, and it’s airy and soft with a crisp crust. Ishaha pulls a slice to her face and inhales.
She doesn’t understand. The rites were broken. Her calls to the gods interrupted. She stares at the open oven, at the ashes of her fire, the heat wavering before the door.
Did she only need to call the gods to heat the oven and into the bread? But no, she’d coughed during the bread display. Minor, but a mar on how she’d wanted to cast her charm.
She holds her bread in hand. It’s a beautiful loaf, and a nibble proves it’s taste. All her bread looks like that. This is her best bake craft yet.
But it’s not bake craft. It’s just bake.
Ishaha continues to nibble her freshly baked bread. What if it was the fire? She added it to the oven, just like the wood. Another ingredient she used in the correct manner. What if that’s all she needed? A spark?
And maybe, maybe not for other things either.
Edit: A version of this story is now part of a published collection! Healing Crystals & Other Breakables. Because faith in the gods can be fragile. 💚
